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3-day Gaza cease-fire goes into effect

Ibrahim Barzak Associated Press

Posted:
07/31/2014 01:10:09 AM CDT

Updated:
08/01/2014 12:38:11 AM CDT

Click photo to enlarge

Flares light up the sky over Gaza City, Friday Aug. 1, 2014. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that Israel will destroy Hamas' tunnel network in the Gaza Strip designed for deadly attacks inside Israel, "with or without a cease-fire." Israel expanded what started July 8 as an aerial campaign against Hamas and widened it into a ground offensive on July 17. Since then, Israel says the campaign has concentrated on destroying cross-border tunnels militants constructed to carry out attacks inside Israeli territory and ending rocket attacks on its cities. (AP Photo/Dusan Vranic)

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — A three-day cease-fire in the Gaza Strip went into effect Friday following heavy Israel-Hamas fighting that killed 17 Palestinians and five Israeli soldiers.

The cease-fire, announced by the U.S. and the U.N. hours earlier, took effect at 8:00 a.m. (0500 GMT) Friday. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry cautioned there were "no guarantees" that the lull would bring an end to the Gaza war, now in its fourth week.

Israel and Hamas both said they would respect the cease-fire but would respond to attacks.

At least four short humanitarian cease-fires have been announced since the conflict began, but each has been broken within a few hours by renewed fighting.

Hours before the cease-fire was to take effect, 17 Palestinians were killed in Israeli strikes, including 10 people from the same family, said Ashraf al-Kidra, a Gaza health official. He said the family members were killed in an airstrike on their home in the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis.

Israel's military said five of its soldiers were killed along the Gaza border Thursday evening when a mortar round was fired at them.

More than 1,450 Palestinians have been killed since hostilities began July 8, according to Palestinian officials. Israel says 61 of its soldiers and three civilians in Israel have been killed.

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In the hours before the cease-fire took effect Friday, Gaza police reported heavy Israeli tank shelling in northern and eastern Gaza, and the loud exchange of fire between Israeli troops and militants was audible throughout Gaza City. Tank shells landed on homes in the city, setting homes and shops ablaze.

Hamas fighters hit an Israeli tank with an anti-tank missile, Gaza police said, and then attacked Israeli troops who came to evacuate the tank crew. Clashes continued into the early morning hours, police said.

Palestinian Abdel Aziz Jendiyah, 4, stands in front of a six-story building, destroyed by an Israeli strike earlier during the war, adjacent to his family house, in the Sabra neighborhood of Gaza City, northern Gaza Strip, Thursday, July 31, 2014. The Jendiyah family building houses 21 members of the extended family, and now with several rooms destroyed, they try to go about their lives, without electricity and without running water for several hours a day. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis) (Lefteris Pitarakis/AP)

A Palestinian man strikes the walls of his house which caught on fire following an Israeli strike that hit the next-door Hamas movement's Al-Aqsa satellite TV station in Gaza City, Thursday, July 31, 2014. (AP Photo/Khalil Hamra) (Khalil Hamra/AP)